Luke 2:1-20
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit
Usually, birthday celebrations are for the person whose birth we are recognizing. The gifts are for them. However, Christmas is a birthday unlike any other. According to the angel, this celebration is for you; you’re the one who gets the gifts. What did the angel say? “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” What causes rejoicing at Christmas is that the birth of the Son of God is for you to save you from your sins and restore you to peace with God. We are gathered here this evening to open the empty hands of faith and receive the real Christmas present, the Christ-child Himself, wrapped in swaddling cloths.
This self-giving of God is where we find the true meaning of Christmas. God joined our humanity to His own divine nature in Jesus, and in so doing He sanctified our human nature and made us holy in Christ, the Son of God. That is the mystery we revel in each year. God and sinful mankind are reconciled and brought back together, because God and man have literally come together in this Christ-child. It’s truly a mind-boggling thing to consider. The One through whom all things were created, Mary’s maker, now willingly lies weak and helpless in her arms. This Jesus is true God, begotten of the Father from all eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary.
The theological word we use to describe this is “incarnation.” The “carne” in that word means “meat” or “flesh.” And that helps us to get at what’s going at Christmas. The eternal Son of God has been “carne-d”; He’s got meat on Him. He was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, enfleshed in her womb and given birth in Bethlehem. The Son of God took up your flesh and blood so that He might die in the flesh and shed His blood for the forgiveness of all of your sins. As a true human being like you, He is your substitute under the Law; He can take your place and suffer the judgment against sin on your behalf. And as true God His sacrificial death is limitless, sufficient to cover the sins of the whole world–mercy abounding and running over. This everlasting, divine love is here for you in the flesh.
To you who are weary and worn-out, to you who feel the burden of your sins: To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who Himself will become weary, who will bear your heavy load to set you free.
To you who are broken-hearted, to you who feel forgotten or taken advantage of: To you is born this day in the city of David of Savior, who is near to those who are crushed in spirit, whose heart will be pierced for you on the cross to mend you.
To you who are fearful, burdened by the darkness of doubt, to you who are struggling with bodily pains and chronic ailments: To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who will go through the valley of the shadow of death for you to bring you through it all into the light of the resurrection of the body.
And to you who have wandered from the Lord, disregarding His preaching and His Supper, to you who have squandered the Lord’s gifts or ignored His words: To you, too, is born this day in the city of David a Savior, the Shepherd who came to restore your soul, to bring you back to the flock with penitent faith, so that you may dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
The reality is that we are all in the midst of a fight, a battle for our lives against sin and death and the devil. But here is the good news: the Son of God has become your blood brother in the human family, which means that your enemies are now His enemies. By uniting your humanity with His divinity, God has made your cause His own in Christ, and He has the power to do something about it. Whatever the devil did to us, He has now done it to the Son of God, too; and that just isn’t going to stand. Jesus is your elder Brother who defends you against the bullying of the evil one. He stands in for you and fights for you so that sin and Satan and the grave are finally conquered.
We see already here in the Christmas narrative that the way He wins this victory is not through an elite display of power but through enduring circumstances that are rather mundane and even lowly–circumstances that involve a little bit of the chaos of family life and family gatherings. Remember that while many English translations give the impression that a pregnant Mary and Joseph were turned away from all the local hotels, that isn’t what happened. It’s not “there was no room for them in the inn,” but more accurately, “there was no space for them in the guest room” as you heard earlier. Joseph and Mary were staying with family. The place was already full to the brim with other relatives who arrived before Joseph and Mary did. So they had to sleep in a makeshift space downstairs where all the day to day work was done, somewhere back near where animals were kept penned indoors for the night—or perhaps in a structure or shelter for animals right next to the house--which is what we have depicted in most of our nativity scenes. Putting it in contemporary terms, they had to set up their bedding in the garage. Luke says that “while they were there” in Bethlehem, the days were completed for her to be delivered.
So consider the scene: in a house filled with sleeping relatives there is a first time mother in labor–no real privacy, right in the middle of the clutter and chaos of life. And she gave birth to her firstborn, a Son, our Lord Jesus, and wrapped Him in strips of cloth as was the custom, and laid Him in the nearby manger, a feeding trough full of soft hay.
What an unexpected way for the King of kings to be born! But what a marvelous message it sends to us. For it shows us that our Lord Jesus truly is Emmanuel, God with us–right in the middle of the messiness of our lives. He’s not a royal elitist carefully avoiding the life of the common folk. He doesn’t keep a safe, antiseptic distance from us. He’s with us right in the middle of our untidy existence and our less-than-perfect families and our strained relationships and our anxiety and fear and sin and brokenness. He humbles Himself to share fully in your human life so that through faith in Him you may share fully in His divine life forever.
That’s the glory of the incarnation; that’s the heart of Christmas that we celebrate today. Jesus lies down with the animals in order to rescue us from our beastly sin and to restore our humanity. Among the animals we see Jesus as the new Adam. Though in Adam all die, those who are in Christ shall be made alive and born again.
So hear the message of the angel once more in all its beautiful clarity and take it to heart: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” You will find Him wrapped no longer in swaddling cloths but in bread and wine, and lying on the altar. Bethlehem, the house of bread, is here. The Savior is humbly mangered for you in the Sacrament to bring you forgiveness and new life. Together with Mary, let us treasure these holy mysteries in our hearts. And together with the shepherds, let us glorify and praise God for all of the things that we have heard and seen, just as it has been told to us.
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit